Author: jetbrane

“Thomas Aquinas taught what was later called an ‘analogy of being,’ which grounds his account of how human language can be used in talking of God. Analogy is the alternative to ‘univocal’ and ‘equivocal’ language. A word is used ‘univocally’ when it means exactly the same thing in several different contexts, and ‘equivocally’ when it means different things in different contexts. ‘Leaf’ is used equivocally in the sentences ‘Put the leaf in the table’ and ‘Don’t pull that leaf off the tree,’ and ‘man’ is used univocally in the sentences ‘Socrates is a man’ and ‘Duns is a man.’ When applied to theological language, each of these alternatives is an unhappy one. If theological language is equivocal, then we cannot say anything true about God, but if it s univocal, God is reduced to the creaturely level.

Thomas believed that the solution to this was to say that theological language is ‘analogical.’ When we say ‘God is wise’ and ‘Socrates is wise,’ ‘wise’ is used analogically. We are not using ‘wise’ in exactly the same way, but we are not using ‘wise’ in completely different senses, either. There is an ‘analogy’ or ‘similarity’ between the two uses. Thomas applied this to all the attributes of God, including the fundamental attribute of ‘existence’ (Being). God’s existence is his essence, but this is not true of other beings. Thus, in the sentences ‘God exists’ and ‘My toenail exists,’ the word ‘exists’ is being used in an analogical way.

By contrast, John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) defended the ‘univocity of being.’ Though it pertains to theological language, the dispute has much larger implications. Scotus did not deny analogy per se. Terms are not predicated of God and creatures in exactly the same way, and Scotus believed that analogy is necessary because ‘creatures are only imperfect representations of the divine. Yet, he said that without some univocity within the analogy, there can be no analogy. In brief, ‘analogy presupposes univocity.’ More fully, ‘If of two things one is the measure of the other, then they must have something in common that permits the first to be measured of the second, and the second to be measured of the first. If of two things one excess the other by some quantity or degree, however great, then they must have something in common with respect of which the first exceeds the second….

Scotus argued that similar points must be true of our language about God and creation. God is more perfect than man, but that raises the question; a more perfect what? What is the common term? God is more perfect in ‘wisdom’ and ‘justice.’ But if this is to make any sense at all, then ‘wise’ and ‘just’ must be used univocally. Unless we are able to form a concept ‘wisdom’ that will encompass both God’s and man’s wisdom, the analogy is impossible….

In some respects, his (Scotus) arguments in favor of univocity seem correct, yet his treatement has radical implications for the relationship of theology and philosophy. Richard Cross points out that God’s ineffability, his transcendence of all our concepts of him, is weakened in Scotus’s account, so that ‘we can know quite a lot about God.’ That seems to put the case to mildly…. As a result God is paled on a continuum with his creation, and the Creator-creature distinction is blurred….

By distinguishing God and man as ‘two degrees’ (finite and infinite) of a single concept (‘being’), he flattens out the Creator-creature distinction….”

Peter J. Leithart
Medieval Theology And The Roots Of Modernity
Revolutions in Worldview — pg. 169-171

I bring this forward because I believe we are still stumbling over this issue today. Leithart lays out the contours of the issue but he doesn’t answer how to navigate through this epistemological problem.

It is interesting that Gordon Clark argues in a very similar way in one of his books that Leithart reveals Duns Scotus argued on the issue of univocal and analogical language.

As I’ve thought about the Van Til, and Clark blowout (which really remains with us today) I think the issue is captured by how Leithart lays out the issue. It seems to me that the issue is whether or not there really is such a thing as analogical language in a pure sense. In my reading it seems that Van Til used “analogy” in a way that fell off the equivocal side of analogical whereas Clark, when he used the word “analogy” fell off the univocal side of analogical.

If I am reading this correctly then the problem for Van Til and his disciples is that the Creator creature distinction becomes a barrier that no language can get through. On the other hand the problem for Clark and his disciples is, as Leithart notes concerning Scotus, the Creator – creature distinction is flattened out and the mind of man and the mind of God become one at every point of univocity in analogy.

Obviously a Creator-creature distinction that cannot be overcome by language and a Creator-creature distinction that really isn’t a distinction because it is conquered by the univocal in the analogical are both fraught with serious problems. The former is going to lean towards a unwholesome rationalistic theology while the latter is going to lean towards a unwholesome mysticism in theology.

Hey, I don’t have the answers (and apparently Leithart didn’t either) I’m just trying to lay out the ideological topographical map.

In “The Politics of Guilt and Pity,” by R. J. Rushdoony (1995 – Ross House Books) Rushdoony as a chapter where he precisely explains how the belief in the “Kingdom of God,” and “justification by faith alone” shaped and affected the social order of Protestant nations. Rushdoony traces how the core beliefs of the Medieval age formed and shaped the social order of the Medieval age. He then goes on to relate how Calvin’s understanding of the “Kingdom of God,” and “justification by faith alone” was not only a threat to Medieval Catholicism’s doctrine of soteriology but as importantly how those twin doctrines were a threat to Medieval Catholicism’s social order. In short the doctrines were a threat to not only the Church but also to the Medieval way of life in the public square. Rushdoony contended that “Rome and Reformed theologies have their distinctive sociologies of justification,” which lent to distinctive social orders.

In, “The Age of Atonement,” by Boyd Hilton (1988 – Oxford) – subtitled “The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785 – 1865,” the author identifies a doctrinal emphasis on the Atonement during this period and meticulously documents how this emphasis affected social order and economic ideas. As a result of this influence, the author notes what he terms the “rage of Christian Economics” in the early decades of the 19th Century. The Age of Atonement closes as the prevailing doctrinal emphasis shifts from the Atonement to the Incarnation, which gave rise to pietism and the “social gospel” liberalism of the late 19th Century.

George Grant in his lectures on Ancient History spends several lectures explaining how Egyptian religious beliefs incarnated themselves into and provided ballast for their social order. Grant spends time connecting the ancient Egyptian Mahat social order was a reflection of Egyptian religion which held to a chain of being organicism. Grant explains how the architecture in Egyptian social order likewise proclaimed Egyptian religious belief.

Social orders and cultures are always a reflection of the prevailing religion of a people. Attempts to sanitize social order or culture from the religious impulse of a people, is futile. First, because such an attempt itself would be the result of a religious impulse. Such an impulse, when pursued by putative Atheists might be called a kind of public square nihilism and when pursued by Christians might be called a kind of public square Deism. Second, such an attempt of sanitizing social order or culture from the religious impulse of people is futile because both social order and culture are nothing but the outward manifestation of a people’s inward religious beliefs. Trying to build a social order or culture or public square that is a-religious would be like trying to draw a square circle or trying to touch dry wet.

Christians who seek to delete Christian considerations from the public square are insuring that a social order and culture will come to pass that is hostile to the Christian faith. A Christianity that refuses to create a social order is a Christianity that insures the attempt on the part of the social order to try and eliminate the Christian faith. Further, a Christianity that refuses to create a social order is a Christianity that will find itself creating heretical forms of Christianity that are formed in order to conform to the prevailing social order that the otherwise orthodox Christianity allowed to come to pass.

There is no such thing as a secular social order. The sooner Christians realize this the sooner they will be about asking how they can be part of building a social order that is distinctly Christian.